The DKTBoard is Everglide’s answer to gamers’ keyboard-plight. At a hefty RRP of USD$ 69.99, can the DKTBoard live up to it’s promises and bear the Everglide tag with pride?

It’s a no brainer that Razer currently holds the crown for popularity amongst gaming enthusiasts. Their range of HIDs and gaming surfaces are world renowed for a good reason. Under Razer’s wings is yet another household brand of gaming devices: Everglide. It is indeed heartening to see both innovators under the same unbrella.

Most of the time, the courier tends to bring more dread than excitement to our overworked Team of reviewers, but to have a HID on the charts was a somewhat refreshing change. In the era where global warming is taking precedence in politics, kudos goes to Everglide for keeping the pakaging of the DKTBoard clean and simple. No unnecessary accesories, no weird plastic globules keeping things in place, no funny contraptions that won’t be used 99% of the time.

After gawking over the packaging, we fingered the new toy till it popped. Out came a sleek aluminum-panelled keyboard. Not only did this new-kid-in-town exude a touch of class, it’s actually petite compared to standard 105 key QWERTYs that oldschool geeks are used to.

You readers probably game a fair share, and chances are you’ve survived at least a LANparty to live and tell the tale to your other gamer comrades. When you’re lugging a souped up Chieftec around with terabytes of data, you’re sure to value space savers like the DKTBoard. Not that a longer keyboard actually weighs significantly more, but a longer keyboard has more exposed keys to be banged around. Definitely not a pretty sight when you’re dead tired after days of intense non-stop fraggin’ action.

Put next to a mobile phone like the Sony Ericsson K800i, the DKTBoard actually makes the phone look fat. Of course, the next thing to do was to plug the DKTBoard into a test rig.

Lo and behold! The keys are floating on a bed of blue! The blue theme actually extends to the indication lamps. At the top right edge is a push-button switch that disables the bling for more solemn users.

The light for the keys actually comes from a diffuser molding located below the keys. The even lighting is something that is seldom seen in lesser lighted keyboards. They keys are also double moulded, meaning a transparent layer was fused below an opaque black layer, something that you’ll see only in high-end keyboards as it is more expensive to implement as compared to the normal silkscreened letterings you see on cheap keyboards. With that, gamers can say goodbye to fading keys with the DKTBoard. Hurray!

The DKTBoard is a wired USB design, with shortcut keys located conveniently above the number keys. A definite plus is the volume shortcuts that are particularly useful in-game. No more pain trying to switch out to Windows mid-game for turning down the volume while your family member picks up a call.

On the rear is a pair of standoffs that actually give a reassuring click as it twists into place. A nice touch indeed.